Lighting the Wind

IT’S TOUGH TO LIGHT THE WIND, RIGHT? At most shoots, the wind is not a welcome visitor. It knocks over your light stands, tousles the hair of carefully coiffed models, and funnels dust and grit right into your sensor. If it is strong enough, it can batter you senseless and mangle your thought process. It also limits your options. Ever try to put up a 74″ Octa softbox in even a mild breeze?

Garrett Garms

“Picture-making isn’t prudent, or cautious, or even well thought out. The best of frames often result from the most illogical of actions.”

But, when it starts whipping around in fearsome fashion, and you happen to have a Moses look-a-like in your company, you go for it, despite the degree of difficulty. When I looked at the storm gathering in the New Mexico skies, and felt the wind rattling through our location like the beginnings of a land-based perfect storm, I was thankfully in the company of my dear friend Donald, and asked him to stand up with me in the bed of a pickup truck.